Zero Game - Brad Meltzer [71]
“You sure this is right?” Viv asks as we follow a sign for Highway 85.
“I’m doing my best,” I tell her. But as the road narrows to two lanes, I glance over and notice that her arms are no longer crossed in front of her chest. Instead, her hands grip the strap of her seat belt where it runs diagonally across her chest. Holding on for dear life.
“Is this right?” she repeats anxiously, turning toward me for the first time in five hours. She sits higher in the seat than I do, and as she says the words, her saucer-cup eyes practically glow in the darkness. Right there, the adolescent who’s mad I got her into this snaps back into the little girl who’s just plain scared.
It’s been a long time since I was seventeen, but if there’s one thing I remember, it was the need for simple reassurance.
“We’re doing fine,” I reply, forcing confidence into my voice. “No lie.”
She smiles faintly and looks back out the front window. I’m not sure if she believes it, but at this point—after traveling this long—she’ll take anything she can get.
Up ahead, the two-lane road swerves to the right, then back to the left. It’s not until my headlights bounce off the enormous cliff sides on either side of us that I realize we’re weaving our way through a canyon. Viv leans forward in her seat, craning her neck and looking up through the windshield. Her eye catches something, and she leans forward a bit further.
“What’s wrong?” I ask.
She doesn’t answer. The way her head’s turned, I can’t see her expression, but she’s no longer holding on to the seat belt. Instead, both hands are on the dashboard as she stares skyward.
“Oh . . .” she finally whispers.
I lean up against the steering wheel and crane my neck toward the sky. I don’t see a thing.
“What?” I ask. “What is it?”
Still staring upward, she says, “Are those the Black Hills?”
I take a second look for myself. In the distance, the walls of the cliff rise dramatically—at least four hundred feet straight toward the clouds. If it weren’t for the moonlight—where the outlined edges of the cliff are black against the dark gray sky—I wouldn’t even be able to see where they end.
I glance back at Viv, who’s still glued to the sky. The way her mouth hangs open and her eyebrows rise . . . At first, I thought it was fear. It’s not. It’s pure amazement.
“I take it they don’t have mountains like these where you’re from?” I ask.
She shakes her head, still dumbfounded. Her jaw is practically in her lap. Watching the sheer wonder in her reaction—there’s only one other person who looked at mountains like that. Matthew always said it—they were one of the only things that ever made him feel small.
“You okay there?” Viv asks.
Snapped back to reality, I’m surprised to find her staring straight at me. “O-Of course,” I say, turning back to the curving yellow lines at the center of the road.
She raises an eyebrow—too sharp to believe it. “You’re really not as great a liar as you think.”
“I’m fine,” I insist. “It’s just . . . being out here . . . Matthew would’ve liked it. He really . . . he would’ve liked it.”
Viv watches me carefully, measuring every syllable. I stay focused on the blur of yellow lines snaking along the road. I’ve been in this awkward silence before. It’s like the thirty-second period right after I brief the Senator on a tough issue. Perfect quiet. Where decisions get made.
“Y’know, I . . . uh . . . I saw his picture in his office,” she eventually says.
“What’re you talking about?”
“Matthew. I saw his photo.”
I stare at the road, picturing it myself. “The one with him and the blue lake?”
“Yeah . . . that’s the one,” she nods. “He looked . . . he looked nice.”
“He was.”
She eventually turns back toward the dark skyline. I stay with the swerving yellow lines. It’s no different from the conversation with her mom. This time, the silence is even longer than before.
“Michigan,” she quietly whispers.
“Excuse me?”
“You said, they don’t have mountains where you’re from.